Lynn Osterkamp - Cleo Sims 03 - Too Many Secrets

by Lynn Osterkamp

  Paige grimaced, but came along behind us. “It makes me nervous, too,” she said. “Let’s get this search over with before someone does show up.”

  Chapter 34

  The house was dim, cold and silent. It felt like a tomb to me, probably because I feared we might find a body there. Even with my warm coat on, I shivered as I inched my way along in the dusk. Two pairs of boots sitting side by side in the entryway tripped me up. I gasped, pointing at them. “Someone’s here.”

  “Shh,” Paige whispered. “They’ll hear us.”

  Gayle reached past me and touched the boots. “They’re completely dry,” she said, “And there are no cars outside and no lights are on. Nobody’s here but us. She walked ahead of us and switched on the lights, revealing a huge great room with vaulted ceilings and a stone fireplace. Beyond it I could see an open kitchen with a breakfast area.

  Paige and I stood rooted to our spots in the entryway. Even with the lights on, the place felt creepy. And those lights shouldn’t be on.

  “Shut the lights off,” I shrieked, lunging for the switch. “People might see lights on in here and come after us.” I hit the switch and plunged us back into the late-afternoon gloomy grayness. I could still see a couch and tables in the main room, but the kitchen and halls going off to other rooms remained ominous shadows.

  “What people are you worried about?” Gayle asked..

  “People driving by. People who might be watching this house. People we don’t want to find us.”

  “Okay, you have a point. We’ll use the flashlight,” Gayle said. She pulled a flashlight out of her bag and shone it around the room. “But it will take longer that way. We’ll have to stay together and go through each room, one at a time.”

  My heart raced as the beam of Gayle’s flashlight swept slowly around the room. Following it, we bumped our way along the walls of the great room, opening the doors of large cabinets, looking for anything suspicious. Then we moved into the center of the room. I knelt and reached under the couch, running my arms back and forth. I felt something soft and furry. “Eww. ” I squealed, jerking my arm out. “I think it’s a dead cat.”

  “Let’s see,” Gayle said, shining the light under the couch. “Looks more like a hat than a cat to me.” She laughed.

  I laughed along with her, then took a deep breath, stood up and followed her into the adjoining kitchen. I opened the refrigerator, which contained a couple of bottles of wine, some organic juice, salad dressing, pickles and such. Definitely looked like leftover summer supplies rather than someone living there now.

  After the kitchen, we began making our way down a dark hall, presumably to bedrooms and bathrooms. All the doors leading off the hall were closed. Gayle handed me the flashlight and got her gun out of her bag before she slowly opened the first door. I shone the light in. Gayle stood next to me with the gun.

  It was a bedroom and it had white walls. Paige lifted the bed covers so I could shine the light under the bed. Nothing. Suddenly we heard a loud thump from the closet. We flinched, grabbed each other and stood silently, pressed against a wall.

  Gayle pointed her gun at the closet doors. “Come out slowly,” she said. “I have a gun and I will use it.”

  We waited. No one came out. The closet was silent.

  “Okay. Let’s open it,” Gayle said finally. “Shine the light right where the door opens, Cleo. Then Paige can go around to the side and open the door. I’ll stand right here with my gun pointed at the opening.”

  I held my breath as Paige pulled the door open. A suitcase fell out. “Phew!” I said with relief. “It must have fallen off the shelf and that was what we heard.”

  We moved on down the hall to a large dark bathroom. The stabbing scene from Psycho flashed through my head. My body tightened, ready to attack or run. But I kept it together and shone the light around. Just an empty bathroom.

  The next door we opened showed stairs going down into darkness. “Yuck, a basement,” I hissed.. “We have to look down there.”

  I took a deep breath, pointed the flashlight into the darkness and put my foot on the first step. We crept slowly down the stairs, me first with the flashlight, then Gayle with the gun, then Paige. A moldy smell made my stomach lurch. As I flicked the light around, dust motes floated in its yellow beam. The unfinished basement was cluttered with bulky shapes.

  At the bottom of the stairs I turned left towards the furnace, slowly running the light over stacks of boxes. They all looked old and dusty and none of them looked big enough to have a person inside.

  Suddenly Paige screamed. I heard her and Gayle both fall to the hard concrete floor, and Gayle’s gun scuttle across the floor.

  “Something grabbed me,” Paige shrieked. “Get it off of me. What is it?”

  I turned and shone the light back on them revealing a tangle of snowshoes, one of which was caught on Paige’s foot. Paige was frantically flapping her leg. She and Gayle pulled themselves free and rubbed their bruises as they struggled back up.

  “I dropped my gun,” Gayle said. “Shine the light around the floor so I can find it.” I flicked the light around but the gun was nowhere to be seen.

  “It sounded like it went this way,” I said walking behind the furnace over to the right. They followed. We dropped to our hands and knees, unsuccessfully brushing our hands around for the gun.

  I stood up so I could shine the light farther out into the room. I saw a washer and dryer, and—uh-oh—a chest freezer. I forgot the gun search as my mind flashed back to a long-ago episode of Picket Fences, a quirky David Kelley TV series, in which the local sheriff finds a body hidden in a suspect’s home freezer. My gut told me to run right back up the stairs, but my brain said we had to look inside that freezer.

  I stood rooted to the spot, dizzy and weak. I tried to tell Gayle and Paige what I was thinking, but, just like in a nightmare, I couldn’t speak. In my mind’s eye, I could see myself walking over, opening the freezer and looking in. But my body refused to participate.

  Finally my voice returned. “Hey,” I said. “Do you see that?” I shone the light at the freezer. I had walked a few steps closer to it, but still wasn’t within touching distance. I stopped. “We have to open that freezer and look in,” I said.

  Apparently Gayle hadn’t watched Picket Fences. She stood up, grabbed the flashlight out of my hand, went over and opened the freezer. She shone the light in and peered down at its contents. She drew in a sharp breath of surprise, jerked her head up, then looked down again. “Omigod, I see a foot. It looks like there’s a person in here, wrapped in a sheet. Omigod, do you think it’s Sabrina?” She cringed and covered her face with her hands, her bravado finally cracked.

  Paige jumped up, ran over and joined Gayle at the side of the open freezer. She looked in, moaned and turned away, hugging herself. She looked stricken. “Come look at this, Cleo,” she said. Her voice sounded weak and small.

  “No,” I mumbled, staying right where I was. My skin crawled at the thought of looking down into that freezer.

  Gayle walked over and put her arm around my shoulders. “You have to look,” she said, pulling me toward the freezer. I steeled myself, looked in, and saw a pale green striped sheet wrapped around something long and lumpy with a bare foot poking out the far end. My stomach heaved.

  “I think we have to unwrap the sheet,” Gayle said.

  “No,” I said, backing away. “We don’t have to unwrap it. We can call the police and let them do it.”

  “No,” Paige said firmly. “Sabrina was our friend. “We have to see if it’s her, and if it is we need to see her and say goodbye before the police turn this into a crime scene.”

  My heart raced. I had to somehow convince them not to unwrap that body. I knew Pablo would be telling us to call 911 immediately. “If we unwrap this body, we’re messing up a crime scene,” I said. “And anyway, didn’t you already say goodbye to Sabrina in the apparition chamber?”

  “Never mind.” said a voice from the stairs. “I’
ll save you the trouble of unwrapping it. It is Sabrina.”

  The lights blazed on, illuminating the entire room. Gayle, Paige and I blinked in the glare as we turned in unison to face the staircase. Lark stood halfway down the steps pointing a gun at us. “We won’t be needing the police,” she said, her voice hard. “Put your phones on the floor. Right now.”

  Gayle and Paige looked dumbfounded. They seemed momentarily paralyzed. Of course they were blindsided. Now I regretted not having shared my suspicions of Lark with them. But she was their friend. Would they have believed me?

  “Didn’t you hear me?” Lark demanded. “I said phones on the floor.”

  I cringed as I pulled my phone out of my pocket, bent down and placed it on the floor. As I bent over I looked around the lighted floor for Gayle’s gun, but no luck.

  Gayle’s phone rang as she pulled it out of her bag. Lark grimaced. “Don’t answer that,” she said. “Just put it down.” Gayle complied.

  Paige stared down at our phones. “My phone is upstairs in my coat,” she said warily. “Do you want me to go get it?”

  Lark waved the gun at her. “No. Just hand me those two phones on the floor.”

  Paige picked up the phones, walked slowly over to the stairs and put them in Lark’s outstretched hand.

  “Now step back where you were,” Lark said to Paige.

  I was shaking so hard I could barely stand still. Did Gayle and Paige have any idea how dangerous Lark could be? Did we have any chance of finding Gayle’s gun to save ourselves?

  Gayle frowned, narrowing her eyes. “Lark, what is going on?” she said, sticking out her hands, palms up. “I can’t believe this. You’ve been keeping this secret all this time? Did you kill Sabrina and put her in the freezer? Please tell me you didn’t.”

  Lark squared her shoulders and gave Gayle a sharp look. “No. I didn’t kill her. She died accidentally. But I did put her body in the freezer.”

  Paige’s breath was rasping in and out. “Why?” she gasped. “Why would you do that to Sabrina?”

  “It’s a long story,” Lark said. “You don’t need to know the details.” She sounded like we were unruly children questioning her authority.

  Paige leaned toward her, eyes wide. “We have time,” she said gently, her voice under control again. “And we’d like to hear what happened.”

  Lark shook her head. “No,” she said. “You need to tell me something—how did you know to come here?”

  Gayle took a step toward Lark, staring her down. “Sabrina’s spirit in the apparition chamber told me to come to this house,” she said, in a matter-of-fact tone. “So we came. And this is what we found. How did you know we were here?” Either Gayle wasn’t nearly as nervous as I was or she was great at appearing unbothered in the face of fear.

  “Stop right there, Gayle,” Lark said sharply, motioning with her gun. “To answer your question, I didn’t know you were here. Darby and I are leaving for Mexico tonight and I came over here to take Sabrina’s body out to a remote area where I could bury her in the snow. But then I saw your car outside. It’s hard to miss your car, Gayle, with that SELL2U vanity plate you have.”

  Watching Gayle and Paige confront Lark revived my courage. Burning questions bubbled up as my fear began to dissolve. “Does this have anything to do with the hospital’s investigation into deaths in the ICU?” I asked. Then, before she could answer, the rest of my questions poured out. “Was that what Sabrina meant in her thirty-day plan about you? Were you euthanizing patients in the ICU? Did she know about it and threaten to report you?”

  Lark scowled. “I know that’s what you think, Cleo,” she said. “The hospital told me that someone made a complaint about me, someone said I push so hard for advance directives, that they were afraid I might interfere with an elderly patient’s treatment. I knew it was you, Cleo. You’ve been watching me like a hawk while I’ve been giving your grandmother excellent care.”

  “You did that, Cleo?” Paige sounded surprised. “You complained to the hospital about Lark?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But I had good reason to be suspicious.”

  “Really?” Lark said. “Really? If I wanted to kill your grandmother, why wouldn’t I have done it by now?” She glared at me. “And what about you, Cleo. Are you the perfect granddaughter? Do you know how your grandmother is doing right now? Is she still alive?”

  “What? What do you mean?” I tried to hide my fear, but my voice cracked.

  “You left her. She may have died while you were on your way up here.”

  I felt a wave of horror. “What are you saying, Lark? Do you know something? Did you do something to Gramma? Give me my phone.” I stepped toward her, hand outstretched.

  Lark pointed her gun at my chest. She looked like she meant business. “Back up, Cleo,” she barked.

  “No. I need to call the hospital and check on her.”

  Lark raised her gun and shot into the wall behind us. Paige screamed as the blast echoed around the concrete room.

  “Back up, Cleo or I’ll shoot you next. Don’t test me.”

  I stepped back. I could risk my life for Gramma, but I couldn’t risk my baby’s life.

  Paige was crying now, hugging her arms around herself. “What has happened to you, Lark?” she sobbed. “Is Cleo right about you killing patients in the ICU?”

  Lark stared silently, standing straight and strong, her eyes boring into us. Her brow was furrowed, her lips were tight, her chin jutted out. Finally she spoke. “You make it sound so evil and dirty,” she said. “But it wasn’t like that at all.”

  She stopped again, looking past us this time. Her face took on a superior glow. “I’m going to tell you the truth because I stand for principle over the law. And so did Sabrina. Sabrina and I had a cause—a cause we cared about as much as Hana and Diana care about their website that punishes abusive men. Sabrina and I were Angels of Mercy.”

  “Angels of Mercy? What’s that?” Gayle asked skeptically. “That doesn’t sound like Sabrina. She never said anything to me about it.”

  “She didn’t tell you everything, Gayle.” Lark smirked. “She knew you wouldn’t understand. You haven’t seen what we’ve seen. Sabrina and I have been ICU nurses for a long time. We’ve been caring nurses, but we knew it was time for our society to face the truth, to make choices, to set priorities. You know Sabrina believed in directing energy toward making things happen rather than letting things happen. We knew it was wrong to continue to waste resources on elderly patients with dementia who don’t even know the difference.” She gave me a knowing look.

  I matched her glare for glare. “So you and Sabrina took it on yourselves to play God and decide who should live and who should die?” I asked.

  “We had to do it,” she said. “Doctors know who is ready to die, but family members like you are whiners who force them to go against what they know is right.” She sounded like a politician giving a speech.

  She continued her rant, eyes glazed, head nodding in rhythm with her words. “All the people Sabrina and I helped to pass on were demented and old and frail. They had no quality of life and they all had life-threatening illnesses that were being treated with antibiotics just so they could live on and get sick again. They were in the ICU and they were suffering. All we did was put some potassium chloride in their IVs to stop their hearts. It’s painless. We did them a favor, putting them out of their misery. We liberated their souls.”

  My heart raced. If we didn’t stop Lark, Gramma would be her next victim. Unless the hospital stops her. “Has the hospital figured it out?” I asked. “Is that what you were arguing about with that woman today?”

  Lark shrugged. “They don’t have any proof. They’re just investigating. Potassium chloride leaves no chemical trace. Lots of people die in the ICU. Without actual cases to look at, to connect to times I was on duty, they’re mostly guessing. It will take a long investigation before they can make a case.”

  Paige’s eyes were wide. “But why did you kill
Sabrina?” she asked in a shaky voice. “If she was doing it with you?”

  “I told you, I didn’t kill her,” Lark said sharply. “It was an accident. And it was her fault. When that Allie started nosing around after her mother died, Sabrina got nervous. She decided we had to give up our cause and get out of nursing. I refused. I was willing to let her go off and do whatever she wanted to do for herself, but she wasn’t willing to let me stay and keep on doing what I wanted to do. She said I had to leave nursing too or she’d report me. And she had the details of the cases, so she could give them all the incriminating information they needed.”

  “But wouldn’t she be implicating herself also if she reported you?” I asked.

  “No,” Lark said. “She said she would report me and then if I tried to implicate her, they’d think I was lying to save myself.”

  Gayle was scowling. “You say Sabrina died in an accident,” she broke in impatiently. “An accident? That’s what Sabrina said too in the apparition chamber. How did the accident happen?”

  “Fine. I’ll tell you,” Lark said. ” Here’s what happened. Sabrina and I had adjacent routes for the wilderness journey. Remember, Paige, you asked me to plan the routes since I know the area so well?”

  Paige nodded.

  Lark continued. “When I planned the routes, I set up hers and mine to be together. Ours were also the closest to the trailhead and the farthest from the main wilderness area where the other four of you would be going. That way you’d be unlikely to hear us or see us. I waited when Sabrina started off and then instead of going on my route, I went behind her on hers. I crept up behind her with a hypodermic needle with a sedative and plunged it into her neck.”

  I took a sharp breath and clutched my neck. “That doesn’t sound like an accident,” I said.

  “That part wasn’t an accident,” Lark said. “But the sedative I gave her wasn’t life-threatening.”